Tourism Australia to Launch Latest Campaign In China

Andrew McEvoy

Tourism Australia has will launch the next phase of its global advertising campaign in China - Australia's fastest and highest value visitor market.

The updated creative promotion campaign, which includes a new broadcast ad, will be shown first in Shanghai in early June.

Tourism Australia Managing Director Andrew McEvoy said: "The real test and true success of any campaign is how it performs with consumers in key international markets. The new campaign creative will be first shown in China but roll out to 25 countries in 17 languages and continue the globally successful There's nothing like Australia pitch.As part of the tourism industry's push to double overnight visitor expenditure to up to A$140 billion by 2020, Tourism Australia is focused on marketing Australia's unique tourism attributes where the greatest tourism growth opportunities exist. China is a big part of that growth and is the logical place to launch the new creative."

542,000 Chinese visited Australia during 2011, representing almost 20 per cent growth compared to 2010 and the number is expected to exceed 600,000 visitors in 2012.

Not only are the Chinese visiting in record numbers, they are also spending at record levels. Current overnight expenditure from China is up 15 per cent, to A$3.8 billion per annum. Tourism Australia believes the China market has the potential to grow to over A$9 billion by 2020.

There's nothing like Australia

He said that while the agency would still strongly support its vital traditional markets of the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand and Continental Europe, it had to align its resources to its biggest growth markets, in this, the Asian Century

The response to Tourism Australia's There's nothing like Australia campaign so far in China has been better than anywhere else overseas, with over 90 per cent seeing it confirming they had started researching a future trip to Australia.

"Coming off such a solid platform, we are confident that the evolution of the campaign with new creative, using rich digital applications and modern, relevant images of Australia, will continue to hit the mark in China and encourage strong visitation and spending, including from fast developing key secondary cities," Mr McEvoy said.

Tourism Australia's decision to use China to launch the campaign is supported by recently published research revealing that the biggest opportunities for Australian tourism to tap into the country's increasingly affluent and travel hungry middle classes may lie in its vast and numerous secondary cities.

The study - carried out by research consultancy GfK Blue Moon - represents the first time Tourism Australia has been able to gain comprehensive insights into the travel behaviour and preferences of consumers living in China's tier two cities such as Chengdu, Tianjin, Chongqing and Wuhan.

There's nothing like Australia

"The great news is that Chinese travellers' strongest preference is Australia as their most desired long haul destination. Importantly, the research also identifies a high degree of consistency in consumer behaviour and trends across both China's largest primary cities and these emerging secondary cities. That is an immensely exciting, if initially daunting prospect for our industry. In the absence of significant differences between our target customers in both its super cities and emerging metropolises we have a fantastic opportunity to build upon the very successful platform already created through our existing tourism campaign work in China. This will allow us to achieve some significant economies of scale as we seek to expand our marketing across what is a vast and still largely untapped market."

Mr McEvoy stressed that launching in China did not mean that Australians would miss out on the new campaign."We will of course undertake significant domestic campaign activity and Australians will get to see the new broadcast ad on TV, in the cinema and online and in new media platforms at the same time we do the big reveal in Shanghai," Mr McEvoy said.

There's nothing like Australia

The new phase of Tourism Australia's There's nothing like Australia campaign will build on an already successful and established platform and take it a step further by specifically focusing on quality, highlighting the very best attractions, experiences and product that Australian tourism has to offer.